


Red

by Crosstown_Rapid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Pre-Series, Psychic Sam, Raised Apart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-01-17 12:53:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12366207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crosstown_Rapid/pseuds/Crosstown_Rapid
Summary: Dean’s always hated them, the espers. So when Dad drags him to the compound and orders him to play nice, the last thing he expects is for the freaks behind the bars to seem so human.





	1. Chapter 1

It was an old airplane hangar thirty miles west of Shelbyville, Indiana. The exterior was rusted, the corrugated metal of the doors corroded to a dusty peach. The fuel sign hanging off the side of the building advertised 68 cents a gallon.

Dean shut the driver’s side door and leaned up against the Impala, squinting out across the overgrown runways that crisscrossed through the summer-burnt grass. “You sure this is it? Place looks like it ain't seen a plane since Nixon was calling the shots.”

Another door slammed shut, and Dad stepped out from behind his monster of a truck with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

“It’s a lead, Dean. Roy says this kid’s been having dreams about a yellow-eyed demon for years. It’s the real thing.”

Dean had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. This was the fourth “real thing” they’d looked into over the last eight months. First it was the witch’s coven up in Maine, then the cult out in Tucson, then the fire spirit down in Tampa. That last one had been a real fucking ordeal. Dean could laugh about it now, but only because his eyebrows had finally grown back. Almost a year since Dad had gotten his big break putting the squeeze on that demon in Michigan, and so far all they had to show for it were first degree burns and a great big pile of squat.

Some of his thoughts must have shown on his face, because Dad gave him a sharp look as he rounded the front of the Impala.

“Lose the attitude before we walk in there.”

Dean spread his arms innocently. “What?”

Dad’s eyes hardened to granite, and Dean sighed, pushing off the car. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about. I’m charming.”

“We’re dealing with a fifty-year-old ex-cop, not a co-ed in a mini-skirt,” Dad warned him. “Roy’s an old friend, but he’s a bit of a hard-ass. The last thing I need is your smart mouth pissing him off before we get what we came for, you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Dean, ducking his head.

“You got the recording equipment?”

Dean hefted up his rucksack, where he’d stuffed the tape recorder they’d scored at a pawn shop two states back. “Yeah, I got it.”

“Good,” said Dad. “Let’s get moving.”

Dean hitched up his bag and followed his father across the cracked tarmac. The closer they got to the rusted-out hangar, the more depressing it looked. Blue paint peeled off the sides of the building in long swathes like animal scratches, and the rounded roof was starting to sag in places.

“So what are we dealing with here?” Dean asked. “All you said before we left was that this guy Roy got his hands on an esper.”

“Turns out he’s got about a dozen. I guess he keeps them here, some sort of a compound.” 

Dean wrinkled his forehead. “Wait, he _keeps_ them? Like an old lady with a cat collection? What the hell for?” 

“Damned if I know,” said Dad grimly.

Dean stared up at the blank face of the building. He couldn’t stand espers. Psychics, mediums, telekinetics—sure they weren’t as messy as witches, but it still gave him the creeps the way something like that could screw with your head.

A shiver prickled up his spine as he thought about all the sick kinds of monsters that could be holed up in there--things that could send you flying across the room, steal the thoughts right out of your mind, electrocute you with the twitch of a pinky finger. It had him looking back almost fondly on the spirit that had had him literally roasting on a spit before Dad had busted in with a consecrated fire hose.

A door on the side of the building creaked open, and a man with a green trucker hat and a bad sunburn stepped out onto the ramp. Dean thought he recognized him from a group of hunter buddies his dad used to run with, vaguely recalling a stringy red-headed man letting him sip from his beer when Dad wasn’t looking. 

Roy was about twenty pounds heavier than Dean remembered, his hair the same faded ginger as the rust on the hangar. He jogged out to meet them, an old plaid shirt flapping in the breeze.

“John Winchester, you son of a bitch!” he said, shaking Dad by the hand. “Good to see you still alive and kicking.”

“You too, Roy, you too,” Dad grinned, reaching out to thump him on the back. “You remember Dean, don’t you?”

Roy glanced over and did a double-take, his eyebrows shooting up as he realized he had to tilt his chin back to look Dean in the eye. “This can’t be your boy!”

Dad nodded, his grin widening. “Yep. That’s Dean.” 

“Well!” said Roy, looking him over. “You got big! Last time I saw you, you were practically sucking on a nipple.”

Dad smirked.

“Not much has changed,” he said, clapping Dean on the back.

Dean bit back a groan. He knew exactly which town and which waitress Dad was remembering, and he still couldn't believe he’d forgotten to lock the door.

Roy looked quizzically between the two of them, but before Dad could launch into the story of how he’d walked in on Dean with a mouth full of Sandra, Dean forced a grin and shook the man’s hand. “Nice to see you again, sir.”

Roy nodded approvingly. “He’s got a firm handshake, John. Just like his old man. I just hope he’s not as much of a cry-baby when he gets the pants beat off of him at poker.”

The smirk slipped off Dad’s face. “You had that ace in your pocket, and the whole damn table knew it!”

“It’s been ten years, John—you still gonna whine about it?”

Dean fell into step behind the two old hunters as they traded a decade’s worth of back slaps and bullshit. It was nice seeing his father joke around and act friendly, even if he knew it wouldn’t last; sooner or later, all of Dad’s friendships ended with someone on the wrong side of a sawed-off.

Roy ushered them into a small wooden building tacked onto the side of the hangar. It looked like it might have been used for file storage once upon a time, but now it was more like a cross between an office and an army camp. Most of the front room was taken up by a massive oak desk, and the bookshelves above it were stacked with canned food and a handful choice grimoires. There was a smaller room in back, barely larger than a coat closet, where someone had managed to cram a couple of hard cots spread with thermal sleeping bags.

Home sweet home, Dean thought, relieved that Dad hadn’t taken Roy up on his offer to let them stay.

“Come on in,” said Roy, waving them over to a beat-up old couch shoved up against the wall. “Take a load off.”

He tugged open a mini-fridge and pulled out a six-pack of beer. “You mind, John?” he asked, looking at Dean.

Dad shrugged. “Boy’s almost twenty." 

Roy handed out the beer, some cheap as hell brand, but Dean wasn’t complaining. Dad wasn’t either, apparently. He downed the whole thing almost as soon as it touched his hand, and Roy passed him another one. Dean popped the tab on his and sat back in the lumpy couch, a loose spring digging into his ass.

“So,” said Roy, settling into a raggedy office chair that creaked when he moved. “I hear you boys are looking for a yellow-eyed demon.”

All the good humor of the past few minutes was sucked out of the room, leaving behind a tense silence broken only by the hum of the air-conditioning unit in the window.

Dad set his beer down on the table next to him. “That’s right.”

“Where’d you get the intel?” Roy asked, raising his eyebrows over the top of his can.

“Another demon, up near Grand Rapids,” said Dad. His tone was flat and brittle. “Found it possessing a local circuit judge. Low-rank, wasn’t much of a player, but it knew enough. Managed to get it to talk before I sent it packing. Wouldn’t give a name, but it let slip about the yellow eyes.”

Dean swilled his beer, clenching his jaw as he remembered the night Dad had gotten hold of the demon in Michigan. Dad made it sound like a trip to the supermarket, but the whole thing had been a bloody, fucked-up mess.

They’d been working a case—jury members from a recent murder trial getting picked off one by one. The murder had been an ugly one, some nice old grandma blown away in her own living room. To make things worse, the defendant had been her grandson, who’d ended up getting stabbed to death in prison just a few months after his conviction.

Vengeful spirit had seemed like a safe assumption, and Dean had been off interviewing a long-legged court stenographer to try to narrow the options. He and Dad had started off favoring the grandson, but the deeper they dug, the more obvious it had become that the guy had been falsely convicted. After the interview, Dean had driven back to their cabin with his money on killer granny—revenge, obviously, for the trumped-up charges that had ended with her grandson taking a sharpened spoon to the eyeball. He’d been sure it was her right up until the moment he walked into the kitchen to find the black-eyed judge tied to a chair, Dad’s knife buried in his thigh.

Turned out all of the killings, even the original murder, had just been a demon screwing with people for kicks. But Dad wasn’t interested in the case anymore. The thing had fucked up, trying to taunt him with Mom’s death. But instead of breaking down like the demon had hoped, Dad had switched from exorcism to interrogation. Dean had never seen his dad like that, red-faced and wild-eyed, so far from the stone-cold hunter he usually was that for a horrible moment Dean had stood frozen in the doorway, staring between the judge and his father wondering which one to douse with holy water.

The judge had survived. Or at least he’d been breathing when they left. Once the demon had been wrung dry, Dad had sent it screaming back to hell in a roar of black smoke. They hauled ass out of Grand Rapids, dialing an ambulance as soon as they were on the freeway. The next time Dean had driven the Impala, there were bloody fingerprints on the steering wheel.

The chair let out a squeal as Roy leaned forward. “John, is it—?”    

Dad nodded, the stiffest bend of his neck. “It’s the one.” 

Roy let out a long breath, swiping the hat off his head to scratch at his thinning hair. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“So this esper of yours,” said Dad, fixing Roy with a grim stare. “You said it's been seeing this thing in its dreams?”

Roy nodded, tilting back his beer. He smacked his lips and dragged the back of his hand across his whiskers.

“That's how we found it in the first place. Few years back, this thing had some vision about a car accident. Knew things it couldn’t possibly have known—the angle of the crash, the way the woman inside had been sliced up. Kept saying that it wasn’t an accident, that a demon had killed her. A demon with yellow eyes, just like you’re looking for. Couple of my old buddies on the force clued me in, so Walt and I picked it up before it could cause any more damage.”

“Is it dangerous?” Dad asked.

“That one?” Roy pulled a face as he considered, the corners of his mouth tugging down. “Nah. Not really. Not compared to some of the other things we’ve had rattling around out there. Got a bit of an attitude problem, but I wouldn’t say dangerous.”

Dean’s skin crawled at the thought of what all Roy might have “rattling around” to make this thing seem like small potatoes, but Dad’s face was like stone.

“We’ll need to talk to it.”

“Not a problem. Thing won’t shut up most days. Always mouthing off about something. Shouldn’t be much of a trick getting it to talk. And if it’s feeling stubborn, well, sounds like you’re an old hand at loosening tongues.”

The wink Roy gave Dad set the judge from Michigan screaming in Dean’s head. He slammed his beer down on the side table and started talking just to drown out the noise.

“So what the hell do you do with these things, Roy?”

“Dean,” Dad said sharply, but Roy waved him off.

“It’s fine, John. Don’t act like you haven’t been wondering the same thing since the moment you pulled up.” Roy turned to Dean. “We’re training ‘em.”

Dean couldn’t help a snort of laughter. “For what, the ballet?”

“I see he’s inherited the sarcasm,” said Roy, sending Dad a dry look. “No, smart-ass, we’re getting them ready for hunts.”

Dad’s head whipped around from where he’d been glaring at Dean. “Wait, you're sending these things out on _hunts_?”

Roy’s chair let out a heavy groan as he sprawled back in it, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Don’t give yourself a hernia, John, we’re not stupid. We don’t send them out alone—we rent ‘em to hunters who want an edge on a job. Not unlike yourself.”

Dad’s mouth tightened. “You mean you’ve got people paying for these things?”

“Oh, yeah. We got espers that get energy signatures off of objects, some that talk to the dead—even a few with healing powers. And that’s not even counting precogs like the one you’re here for. They’re scary sons of bitches, but when you keep ‘em under control, they can be damn useful. We make a better than decent profit doing it, too, I’ll tell you what. Walt’s family owns this place, so overhead’s practically nothing.”

He raised his eyebrow significantly, clearly expecting them to congratulate him on his business model.

“Yeah,” Dean sniggered, “that sounds like a pretty sweet deal. What’s next on the agenda? Sending underprivileged vampires to dental school?”

“Dean.” Dad’s voice cracked over him like a whip, and Dean knew that if he’d been a couple years younger, he’d have gotten slapped around the back of the head. “What did I tell you right before we walked in here?”

Dean clamped his mouth shut, dropping his eyes to the water-stained floorboards. “Sorry, sir. Just a joke.” 

Dad frowned at him, annoyed. “Yeah, well, keep a lid on it, we’re trying to have a serious conversation.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on the boy, John,” said Roy, gathering up the empty beer cans and tossing them in the trash. “Poor kid’s probably bored out of his skull, stuck in here listening to us old bastards go on and on. Here.” He patted his pockets and tossed Dean a set of keys. “Why don’t you go take a look around the place? Check out my little ballet troupe for yourself.”

Dean caught the keys, rolling the cold metal in his hand.

“You sure that’s safe?” Dad asked, raising his eyebrows.

Roy shrugged. “Boy can take care of himself, can’t he? Besides, we keep ‘em on a short leash. Walt’s out there, Dean, just ask him to show you around.”

Dean closed his hand around the key ring. “That alright with you, Dad?”

Dad grunted, popping open a third beer and taking a long pull. Dean took that as a yes and heaved himself up off the couch.

Roy pointed him towards a door opposite the one they’d come in through. This one was heavy duty, solid iron as far as Dean could tell, with two bolts and an enormous padlock.

“Gold opens the padlock, and that rounded silver one unlocks the knob,” said Roy as Dean fumbled with the keys. “There’s a gate on the other side, combo’s 4024. Oh, and ask Walt to check in on Number 8, would you? It’s due for red in a couple of days.”

The words didn’t make much sense, but Dean repeated them back with the military precision his father had drilled into him. “Number 8 due for red. Got it.”

“Keep your eyes open, Dean,” Dad said from the couch. Dean jerked his chin, unhooking the padlock and pulling open the door.

Behind him, Roy cracked open another beer and started quizzing Dad on the finer points of his interrogation technique. Gritting his teeth, Dean stepped out of the air conditioning and into the smothering heat of the hangar, letting the enormous slab of iron fall shut on the sounds of the judge’s screams.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean started sweating as soon as the door swung shut. The hangar trapped heat like a greenhouse, and the couple of heavy-duty fans he could hear chugging somewhere further in weren’t doing much besides blowing the hot air around.

The door had opened into a wire cage like some people used for storing tools, heavy chain link hemming him in on all sides. For a split second his hunter’s paranoia reared up, screaming at him to get the hell out, but it only took a quick glance around the makeshift room to see that the extra security wasn’t there to keep him in. 

He’d stumbled into some sort of supernatural supply closet, the entire back wall lined with knives, guns, machetes, even a couple of wooden stakes. Below that was an industrial shelving unit crammed with enough ghostbusting equipment to take down a whole cemetery. Salt, rope, cuffs, holy water—and that was just what he could see poking out of the boxes in front. It made the stash Dean kept in the trunk of the Impala look like a kid’s playset, and he felt a twinge of jealousy as he ran his eyes over the shelves.

A yellowed refrigerator wheezed in the corner. More beer, Dean guessed, tapping the code Roy had given him into the pin pad. The gate buzzed open and he stepped through it, swinging the ring of keys on his finger. 

The hangar was huge, bigger than it looked from the outside, but no less run-down. A network of rust-eaten trusses arched above him, giving him the uneasy feeling that he’d just walked into an enormous spider’s web.

Fading daylight fell through the holes in the roof, slanting over a maze of wire cages like the one behind him. It was difficult to see in the half-light, but as Dean’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, he began to make out shapes hunched inside of them.

_Espers._

“Hey! How the hell did you get in here?” 

Dean whipped his head around. A heavyset guy, a few years younger than Dad, came hurrying out from a line of cages, clicking the safety off a Beretta. 

“Whoa, hey!” Dean called. “You Walt?”

The man leveled the gun at his head. “Who’s asking?” 

Dean held up the keys. “I’m Dean Winchester. Roy said you could hook me up with a little tour.”

The man’s face broke into a grin. He flicked the safety on and stuffed the gun down the back of his pants. “Winchester! You John’s boy?”

“That’s right,” said Dean.  

Walt was a big guy, a few inches taller than Dean, with tan, flabby arms and a gut like a Thanksgiving turkey. His face was round and open, and what hair he lacked on his head he more than made up for with an impressive black beard that had Dean reaching up to scrub at his own face.

He’d tried to grow a mustache once, before his father made him shave it off. Dad said it looked like he’d gotten snot on his lip, but Dean had liked it—and he knew for a fact that Faye Duncan from Glendale Senior High had _loved_ it. But any pleasant memories of making it to third base with a frisky baton-twirler were obliterated when Walt’s hand squeezed around his fingers.

“Well, hell! I’ve been on a few hunts with your dad. Couldn’t ask for a better man covering my ass.”

Somehow in his little overview, Roy had failed to mention that Walt held the reigning world title in championship sweating. It was like getting slobbered on by a Doberman.

“Yeah,” said Dean, trying not to grimace. “Yeah, Dad’s the best.” 

Walt gripped his hand a second longer, until Dean could practically feel it dripping, then slapped him on the shoulder. “So, you wanted a tour?”

Dean held his hand away from the rest of his body. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Not at all! I was just tucking ‘em in for the night,” said Walt with a wink. “Let me hit the lights so you can get a better look.”

Dean waited until Walt turned around and wiped his hand on his jeans.

“Jesus,” he muttered. He got why it was so important to stay on these guys’ good side, he really did, but if Walt showed any signs of being a hugger, Dean was taking him down, esper or no esper.   

A loud click echoed off the rafters. Dean blinked as the hangar flooded with fluorescent, giving him his first real look around the place. Suddenly Walt’s soggy handshake seemed like the epitome of hygiene.

It looked less like the training compound Roy had been selling to Dad and more like the kind of shitty petting zoo PETA ought to have been trying to get shut down. There were a couple of worn-out mats shoved in a corner and a faded target spray-painted on the back wall, but most of the space was taken up with cages. More than a dozen of them, lined with straw like horse stalls, a bare cot and a paint bucket standard in each one.

“So,” said Walt, coming up behind him. “What do you think of the place?”

“Real homey,” said Dean, glancing critically at a bluish spray of mold on the nearest wall. “You guys offer timeshares?”

Walt stared at him for a full five seconds and then laughed, like it had taken him that long to get the joke.

“You’re just like your old man,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “What a kidder that guy is.”

Dean’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. John Winchester? A _kidder?_ Dean was pretty sure the first person to say that to Dad’s face would end up smashed down in the dirt gluing their own kneecaps back together. Walt must have thought Dirty Harry was a real friggin’ hoot. 

The hangar floor was a slippery mess of rotten straw, muddy rainwater, and God only knew what else. Dean followed behind as Walt led him towards the cages, stepping carefully around a puddle the size of Lake Superior. As they got closer, the acrid smells Dean had been trying to place since he’d walked in solidified into the heavy stink of piss and shit and bleach. His stomach heaved, and it was sheer willpower that kept him from adding his own mystery puddle to the stained concrete.

The espers were visible now. He counted them--one, two, three, four human shapes hunched inside the cages. He could feel their eyes on him, their dull gazes crawling over his skin.

He licked his lips. “Should I, uh, be wearing some sort of tin foil hat? Maybe a tin foil athletic cup?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about them,” said Walt, waving him up the first aisle. “We keep ‘em under control. Only got a few here right now, anyway. Rest are all out on hunts.”

Dean crouched down by one of the cages, peering through the gaps in the wire. The esper inside was curled up on its cot, face hidden by a greasy curtain of dark, shaggy hair. If Dean listened closely he could hear its ragged breaths as it rocked itself back and forth. It was muttering something, nonsense words, over and over.

He glanced up at Walt.  “Hate to break it to you, but I think this one’s broken.”

Walt snorted. “You better hope not, boy, or you and your daddy just drove a long way for nothing.”           

Dean’s eyes shot back down to the esper on the cot. “You mean this is it? The one that can see the demon?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Doesn’t look like much, does it?” Walt whistled through his teeth. “Hey! Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty, you got company.”

The esper faltered in its murmuring. 

“That’s right,” said Walt, thumping the cage. “Up, you little bastard. Somebody here wants to meet you.”

As the esper struggled to prop itself up, Dean caught sight of a ragged number 3 scrawled across a piece of cardboard that hung from the top of the cage.

“Shit,” he breathed, suddenly remembering Roy’s message. “Hey, Walt, I almost forgot—Roy said something about Number 8 being due for red, whatever the hell that means. Wanted you to check on it.”

Walt sighed. “Dammit. Hope we got enough—this one’s been running us dry. Roy’s been trying to train it to read lottery numbers, but the thing’s like a damn mule. Just keeps going on about that stupid demon.”

Dean’s lips quirked into an empty smile. “Lucky for us.”

“Yeah, yeah, lucky for you,” Walt grumbled, waving him off. “I’d rather have the damn numbers. You mind waiting here? This’ll just take a minute.”

Dean shook his head.

As Walt shuffled off to another part of the hangar, Dean leaned up against an empty cage, staring down at the esper. It was sitting now, long weedy legs crossed on top of the cot. It slouched against the side of the cage with its arms hugged around itself, thin shoulders bunched beneath a ratty gray tee-shirt.

It crossed Dean’s mind that maybe he should wait for Dad, but the longer Walt was gone, the more the awkward silence itched at his skin.

He kicked at the chain link. “So what the hell are you?”

Dean didn’t know what he’d been expecting, some sort of retinal flare like a shifter, or dilated pupils like a werewolf, but when the esper glanced up, its eyes were normal. Wide and hazel, almost caramel-colored in the light.  

“Sam,” it said quietly.           

Hell, it looked like a kid. Barely legal to drive, like it should have been sitting in algebra class instead of rolled up in a pathetic ball in this shithole. Dean hated that kind of monster most of all—the kind that faked the innocent human victim so that you couldn’t stop seeing its face even months after you’d wasted it. 

Dean had killed a creature like that the year before. This one had disguised itself as a little girl, hanging around country back roads pretending to be lost. Whenever some Good Samaritan stopped by to help, it dragged them out of their car and sliced out their organs.

When Dean finally caught up with it, it was up to its elbows in a postal worker, its cute little Sunday dress splattered with viscera. Dean hadn’t hesitated; he’d taken it out with a silver-tipped arrow right through the throat. But in the split second after he released the bowstring, he’d glimpsed a tiny tremor in its lips—something so childlike, so human, that it drove the air from his lungs. The research, the lore, the talk his father had given him right before he handed Dean the bow, all of it went out the window. He’d lurched forward with his hand outstretched, reaching for the arrow as though he could snatch it back before it buried itself in the little girl’s spine.

It went all the way through her.

Dad had bought him a whiskey after that hunt, after they’d burned the creature’s body in a ditch and left an anonymous tip with the police about the dead mailman. They drank in silence, Dad never saying a word about how Dean had almost blown the job. He hadn’t needed to.

Dean still dreamed about it sometimes. The ugly squelch of the creature’s flesh as he pulled the arrow out of its neck. Those baby-blue eyes open and empty, staring past his shoulder.

Dean blinked himself out of the memory, feeling his lip curl. “Sure. Right. _Sam.”_

He waited for the esper to say something, bare its teeth maybe, but it just stared at him.

“Fine,” said Dean, crouching down again so that they were at eye-level. “What am I thinking about right now?”

Up close, the esper looked like shit. There were lines around its bloodshot eyes like it hadn’t slept in days, its deceptively young face clammy and pale.

“I don’t know,” it said wearily.

Dean stopped beaming images of Faye Duncan taking off her bra, disappointed. “For a psychic, you sure suck at being psychic.”

Annoyance flickered across the esper’s face. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Dean frowned at it. “What, you need to sniff my hand or something first?” 

“I’m not a cat,” it said, rolling its eyes like Dean was some sort of an idiot. “I’m just not that kind of esper.”

“So then what kind are you?” Dean snapped. “‘Cause so far, all you are is a supernatural pain in my ass.”

The esper hunched its shoulders. “I’m not the only one,” it muttered. 

Anger lit through Dean like a firecracker. He took a deep breath in through his nose, weighing the therapeutic benefits of reaching in and strangling the fucking thing against the ass-kicking he’d get if Dad found out he’d ganked their only lead. He hadn’t quite decided—though the ass-kicking was starting to seem more and more worth it—when Walt rounded the corner.

The big guy chuckled when he saw him. “You make a new friend, there, Dean?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Dean, letting his eyes bore cruelly into the esper’s. “Me and _Sam_ here will be best buds in no time. We’re even thinking of making friendship bracelets. Ain’t that right, Sammy?”

“That’s right,” said the thing, staring straight back at him. Its pale lips were tight, its flinty hazel eyes unreadable. “Dean.”

Walt smirked. “Don’t let it get to you. Number 3’s got a real smart mouth.  Just let me know when it gets like that, and I’ll give it a smack for you.”

He leaned around Dean and kicked the cage so hard it rattled the whole row. The esper scrambled back, half-falling off the side of its cot, and Walt laughed.

Dean didn’t. The esper looked pathetic like that, tangled up in its own limbs, its too-long hair hanging over its face. As pissed as he’d been, it was easy to feel sorry for it.

Too fucking easy.

“I stopped in the office,” said Walt. “Your dad says to get your ass moving. I think you guys are about to head out for the night.”

Dean tore himself away from the esper, frowning. “Dad didn’t want to get a look for himself?”

“Not really much point. This one had a full dose of red this morning,” said Walt, jerking his head toward the esper. “It’s tapped for the day. Won’t be any use till tomorrow, at least.”

“Seriously?”

“Hey, your dad didn’t exactly call ahead,” said Walt, holding up his hands. “The super lotto’s on tonight. By the way, Dean, you might wanna get in there sooner rather than later. Roy broke out the good stuff, and he and your dad were looking a little…” He tipped back his hand like he was holding a glass of whiskey.

Dean felt a sudden wave of exhaustion. “Perfect,” he huffed under his breath. His knees cracked as he stood. “You coming?”

Walt shook his head. “Nah, you go ahead. I’ve got a few more last-minute things to finish up.”

The esper made a noise in its throat, a tiny choked-off moan like the plunk of a bowstring. Dean scowled down at it, feeling another surge of hatred for the boy-seeming thing.

As though it could feel the weight of his glare, the esper slowly raised its head, peering up at him through its bangs. Their eyes locked.

Dean wanted to shoot it. Shoot it, stab it, light it on fucking fire, whatever it took to get rid of those eyes. There was just something about them, the way they shifted from gold to green to blue. He hated it. Hated that a monster could make him feel this way, guilty for doing his job.

“You alright?” asked Walt.

Dean blinked, tearing himself away from the esper.

“Yeah,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll just—I’ll see you tomorrow, alright?”

Walt nodded, clapping a moist hand on his shoulder. “Take care.”

Dean faked a smile.

He wove his way back through the cages, trying to concentrate on how the hell he was going to get the truck keys off his dad. As he skirted his way around the puddles, he forced himself to think about the soft motel bed waiting for him on the other side of that train wreck, the greasy takeout from the Chinese place down the street, the pay-per-view. Maybe even a little Magic Fingers if he could dig up enough quarters.  

Dean didn’t look back at the esper, not once. But a lifetime of hunting meant he didn’t have to turn around to know that it was watching him. He could feel its eyes on the back of his neck, searing into him from across the hangar.


	3. Chapter 3

Dad woke up late the next morning with a hangover he wouldn’t admit to.

Dean practically got his ass chewed off when he tried to offer him a bottle of aspirin, but Dad didn’t complain when he came back from the crappy continental breakfast in the lobby with two coffees and a stack of doughnuts. He grabbed the cardboard cup out of Dean’s hand and sucked it down black before snatching up the bear claw Dean had picked for himself.

“Let’s get the lead out.”

The Impala was parked out front. Dean circled around to the driver’s side. It was his car now, had been for six months. Half birthday present, half excuse for his dad to go out and buy that goddamn truck.

Dean knew too much about mechanics to deny that the truck was a beautiful machine, and Dad had fitted it out so that it was pretty much the Batmobile of monster hunting. But it was too big, too flashy. Dean slipped into the Impala’s front seat and ran a hand over her dash. No class. 

Dad fell into the passenger seat and slapped down the sun visor. “You want to give me my keys back now?”

Dean avoided his father’s glare as he dug around in his jeans for the keys he’d picked from Dad’s pocket the night before. Convincing him to leave his truck behind at the airport had been about as much fun as French-kissing a ruguru. After twenty minutes of listening to his father yell about the missing keys, Dean had ended up half-coaxing, half-shoving him into the backseat of the Impala. Roy hadn’t been any help, standing around laughing, and Walt had still been fucking around with the espers out in the hangar.  

Dad swiped the keys out of his palm. “I’m not having this conversation with you again. You keep your goddamn hands to yourself, do you understand me?”

Dean bit down hard on his back teeth as he started up the car. “Sir,” he said, not committing himself.

They drove through the center of town, the same quaint little main street Dean had seen a hundred times in a hundred towns, strung with all the same hardware stores and cafes and antique shops. The small town charm gave way to a strip mall and a pair of gas stations, then to a large brick high school with a sign out in front of the empty parking lot, angled towards the road:

DRIVE SAFE AND ENJOY YOUR SUMMER

GO BEARS

Dean felt a twinge in his gut. How many kids were out there right now, free as a breeze—planning road trips to Myrtle Beach, throwing backyard barbecues, whining by the city pool about having nothing better to do—while not fifteen miles down the road, an esper that looked like it should have been one of them rotted in a six-by-six cell?

What little traffic there was died off as the road rolled out into endless fields of corn, sun glinting off the half-grown stalks. Dean drove fast, trying to drown his thoughts in the rush of the wind, the purr of the engine.

“We starting the interviews today?” he asked, glancing over at his dad.

The doughnuts had disappeared almost ten minutes ago, and Dean could tell from the angry crease in his father’s forehead that he was itching for another cup of coffee.

“This isn’t CNN, Dean. We’re not here to get the damn thing’s opinions on the election.” Dad flipped the visor back up irritably. “Roy said he’s got to prep it first, whatever the hell that means, and then we can start in on the interrogation.”

_Interrogation_. The word stuttered through Dean’s mind, kicking up a cloud of black smoke. He gunned the engine, watching the needle on the speedometer sail past seventy.

“Bet it goes Nader,” he said, trying to muffle the screams in his head with his usual bullshit. “I was picking up on some definite Green Party vibes yesterday.”

“You saw it?”

Dean glanced up, catching his father’s eyes in the rearview mirror. For a moment, they looked just like the esper’s, the same searching look, the same indeterminate color. Dean blinked hard, forcing his own eyes back to the road. “Yeah, I saw it.”

“And?”

Dean barely braked for a curve, taking it sharp and fast. _“And,_ it was kind of an asshole.”

“Dean,” Dad growled. 

Dean threw up his hands, letting the car veer toward center. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Dad, it looked normal. No glowing eyes, no extra arms, no freakin’ dog tail.” He steadied the wheel, guiding the Impala back into his lane. “It was just a kid.”

“A kid?”

Dean bit down on the side of his tongue. He hadn’t meant to let that slip. He kept his voice low and even—casual. “Yeah. Maybe sixteen.” 

Dad’s sigh weighed on him like a barbell across the chest. “Goddammit.”

Dean snapped his eyes back up to the mirror. “Look, this isn’t going to be a problem, alright?  I don’t care if it’s a kid or a hot chick or a frickin’ puppy—you say shoot and I’ll waste it.” 

“That’s not what I’m worried about.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

But Dad didn't say anything else. He just sat there looking grumpy and tired, rubbing his forehead like it was Dean and not a fifth of Jack that was giving him a headache.

The turnoff for the old airport was a gravel lane nearly invisible in the weeds. Dean saw it at the last second and hooked a quick left, dragging up a blanket of dust that followed behind them as they crunched their way toward the hangar.

Dad was out of the Impala before Dean had even switched off the engine, rushing over to check on his precious truck. He left a mess of doughnut crumbs and crumpled napkins behind him on the passenger seat, his empty coffee cup crammed into the cup holder on the side of the door.

Dean stared after his father with a mixture of indignation and disbelief. The one time— _one time—_ he’d left a fast food bag sitting on the dash overnight, he’d gotten his ass handed to him, along with a toothbrush and orders to spit-shine the hubcaps every day for a week. Now suddenly the Impala was a freaking dumpster?

Dean cleaned up the mess himself, fuming silently as he popped open the passenger door to brush the crumbs outside.   

Dad’s head jerked around the side of the truck.

“The damn windows were down, Dean,” he bitched, calling across the tarmac. “You’re lucky it didn’t rain last night!”

Dean took a deep breath in through his nose, ducking down to scrape up a handful of used napkins. Somehow he managed not to say anything.

Neither of them were in the mood for the broad grin Walt was wearing when he pushed open the side door.

“Hell, John, we thought you’d skipped town! What happened to getting an early crack at the thing?”

“Boy slept in late,” Dad grunted, brushing past him into the office.

Dean glared at the back of his father’s jacket as he followed him inside, his fist still clenched around the sticky wad of napkins. “Yeah, sorry about that. Stayed up all night watching reruns of _Laverne and Shirley_.”

Walt frowned. “Was there a marathon on?”

“Sure was,” said Dean, deadpanning. “Dad and I are suckers for TV Land.”

Dad ignored them both, hunching his shoulders forward. “You got any coffee in this place?”

Walt chuckled, reaching on top of the filing cabinet for a dented tin percolator. “What’s the matter, John, you hungover or something?”

Dad set his bag on Roy’s desk and sat heavily in the worn-out office chair. “Just shut up and pour the damn coffee.”

Dean chucked his duffel down next to the couch, startling an ugly bulldog curled up on one of the cushions.

“Watch it!” Walt scolded as he passed Dad a steaming mug across the desk. “She’ll nip you if you’re not careful. She’s real sensitive.”

“Yeah,” Dean frowned, watching her lick her butt. “Seems like a real princess." 

Walt walked over and sank into the sofa, patting his knee until the dog leapt up on his lap. He pulled a battered book of crosswords out from between the cushions. Not even noon, and the guy already had pit stains the size of Memphis. Dean settled for the arm of the couch.

“Yours?” he asked.

“Yep,” said Walt, ruffling the bulldog’s jowls. “Sweet little thing, ain’t she? Boxer mix. Found her hanging around the scrap heap when she was just a pup. Her name’s Patsy.”

Dean raised his eyebrows. “Patsy? As in…?”

“Cline,” Walt grinned, patting her belly.

Dean caught his father’s eye across the room. Despite their rocky morning, the two of them shared a grimace.

Before Walt could dig up any crappy country albums, the iron door swung open with a heavy clang that sent Patsy scrambling up out of Walt’s lap. She barreled straight at Dean, one of her flailing legs catching him right in the solar plexus.

Roy stepped in from the hangar, wiping his hands on a stained rag. “Eight’s all loaded up and ready to go, Walt. Make sure you remind Barber: you break it, you buy it. I don't care what he does to ‘em, but we’re running a business here. Especially after last month with that goddamn—”

Walt gave a soft, rasping cough, and Roy looked up. His rusty eyebrows drew together as he caught sight of Dean pinned to the arm of the couch by sixty pounds of butt-ugly bulldog. “Well, hell! There you boys are! What took you so long?”

“There was a _Laverne and Shirley_ marathon on last night,” Walt explained, shaking out his crossword. The incredulous look Roy sent him sailed right over his head. “TV Land, right, Dean?”

“That’s right,” Dean confirmed, hiding his smirk behind the mountain of sweaty dog on his lap while Dad sipped stonily from his mug.

“Sure,” said Roy, still looking a little perplexed. “Sure. Yeah, Walt and I like to watch _The Beverly Hillbillies_ from time to time.”  

He was smiling, but Dean could still see the telltale signs of a hangover in the tired lines of his face. His pasty complexion didn’t hide it as well as Dad’s, and his eyes were watery and red-rimmed as he squinted across the room.

“Got Number 3 all ready for you boys,” he continued, nodding at Dad. “You just say the word, John, and we’ll head on out there.”

Dad knocked back the rest of his coffee and set the mug on the desk. The word, as always, was a sharp, clipped, “Dean.”

Dean’s chin yanked itself up. “Sir?”

“Tape recorder." 

It was an order, and Dean snapped to attention. Everything that had been stewing between them since he’d had to mop his dad up the night before—the exasperation, the resentment, the irritation edging into anger—all of that disappeared in the wake of what they’d come here to do. This was the job. And no matter what happened, no matter how pissed off he was or how unreasonable Dad was being, when the time came, Dean always fell into line like a good soldier.  

Patsy gave an irritated snuffle as Dean shoved her off his lap, her bugged-out eyes gazing up at him accusingly as he dug the bulky tape recorder out of his duffel bag.  

“Got it,” he said, handing it over to his father.  

“You put fresh batteries in here?” Dad asked, tapping the compartment.

“Yes, sir.”

“New tape?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You bring extras?”

“Yes, sir.”

Dean looked his father in the eye as he spoke. He always did. It was something Dad had trained into him since he was a little kid, like giving hard, firm handshakes and never backing down from a fight. Which meant that Dean saw it—that look that flashed across his father’s face. That same black, howling hatred that had haunted them since Michigan.

“You ready?” Dad asked.

Dean jerked his chin, dropping his eyes to the ratty brown carpet as he bent to zip up his duffel bag. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Dad clapped him on the shoulder. “Then let’s go get this son of a bitch.”

_Sam,_ a voice whispered in the back of Dean’s mind. _I’m Sam._

Dimly, Dean heard Roy ask his father a question—there was a laugh from Walt, the rumble of his father’s reply, then the heavy tread of boots, the ugly scrape of the door.

“You coming?”

Dean blinked. The room was empty except for Patsy, who was twisted around, growling softly as she gnawed at her own ass. Walt stood in the doorway, sweat shining on his cheeks as he stared at Dean expectantly.

Dean shook himself. Shoving his hand back into the duffel, he pulled out a three-pack of cassette tapes still in the shrink-wrap. 

“Just grabbing these for Dad,” he said, holding up the package.

“Well, hurry it up,” said Walt, waving impatiently. “You’re gonna miss all the action.”

Dean kicked aside his duffel as he crossed the room, stepping carefully over Patsy, still going to town on herself. When Walt slung an arm over his shoulders, Dean didn’t even flinch.   

“So, kid,” said Walt, “I been meaning to ask—Laverne or Shirley?”

“Shirley,” said Dean, pasting on an easy grin as the two of them stepped out into the hangar. “Definitely Shirley.”  


End file.
